Elsevier

Health Policy

Volume 121, Issue 6, June 2017, Pages 594-603
Health Policy

The Directorate-General for Health and Consumers 1999–2014: An assessment of its functional capacities

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthpol.2017.03.018Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
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Highlights

  • DG SANCO’ s capacities for policy making regarding public health and health systems have improved over time.

  • DG SANCO’s capacities to assess a situation, set the agenda and decide on a concrete policy are to some extent established.

  • Capacities for implementation and evaluation are less developed.

  • Setting priorities for a limited number of policies within DG SANTE’s remit is recommended.

Abstract

Capacity assessment has become a popular measure in the health sector to assess the ability of various stakeholders to pursue agreed activities. The European Commission (EC) is increasingly dealing with a variety of health issues to coordinate and complement national health policies. This study analyses the functional capacity of the Directorate-General for Health and Consumers (DG SANCO) between 1999 and 2004. It applies the UNDP Capacity Assessment Framework and uses a literature review, a document review of EU policy documents and expert interviews to assess the capacity of DG SANCO to fulfill its mandate for public health and health systems. Our results suggest that DG SANCO has established capacities to engage with stakeholders; to assess various health issues, to define issue-specific health policies and to collect information for evaluative purposes. In contrast, capacities tend to be less established for defining a clear strategy for the overall sector, for setting priorities and for budgeting, managing and implementing policies. We conclude that improvements to the effectiveness of DG SANTE’s (the successor of DG SANCO) policies can be made within the existing mandate. A priority setting exercise may be conducted to limit the number of pursued actions to those with the greatest European added value within DG SANTE’s responsibilities.

Keywords

DG SANCO
DG SANTE
European union
Health policy making
Capacity assessment

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This article has been made Open Access through funding by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies as part of its Health Systems and Policy Monitor (www.hspm.org), an innovative platform that provides a detailed description of health systems and provides up to date information on reforms and changes that are particularly policy relevant.